OK, how does God fit into this?

[KateandtheElves]

Personally I am agnostic (I think that's the right word. I don't believe in God but I can't say for sure that He doesn't exist.). But I have the utmost respect for people who do believe in God and use that belief to help them be better people (as my late husband did).

For those of you who do believe in God, and I know this a question that has been asked many times before, why would God let so many people (children even) be killed last week? I just can't understand how you could reconcile this enormous tragedy with a loving God.

I don't want to start an argument, but I'm genuinely interested in a believer's point of view.

Don't believe in God whatsoever! I believe in science and nature.

Just wanted to have my little input.

Joash, could you please explain what you meant by your post?

think she thinks we area ll mad

Well we are, of course.

But still - explain yourself!

maybe she's saying she doesn't know where he is?

I'm agnostic too, sure that's the correct term. Am open minded to a point about religion but more on the side of non-belief if that makes any sense at all. I cannot believe that if there was a god that he could let such things happen imo. What possible reason could there be for all the suffering that happens. It doesn't make sense to me.

Having said that, i'm happy for those that have faith, good on them, if it helps them, that's fine.

Not really adding much to this topic but just thought i'd put my feelings down too.

think wewe all think of god as the bloke form the werners original advert
dont hink he is.

Delgirl, I agree with you entirely.

just re-read my post and it may sound like gobbledigook but i know what I mean

I'm a Christian, and I find events like this really really horrible - obviously, as I'm sure everyone does. Though I found something like Beslan more upsetting, even though it affected fewer people numerically, because it was caused by peoples deliberate cruelty rather than random nature.
I don't think God 'causes' things like the tsunami in a direct way. I mean, I really don't think someone did something bad and God sent it as a punishment or test of some kind. If i thought that I would hate God not worship him. But I do believe that God set the world up in such as way as to allow such things to happen, and this is the knottiest problem in theology. I think the best attempt at an explanation is the 'free will' argument - that in order for us to have free will, there has to be an element of randomness in the universe, everything can't be totally predetermined like a clockwork machine, and therefore God chose to have a world in which we had free will and disasters would sometimes happen (including people choosing freely to act evilly), rather than one in which we were all happy all the time. (The best fictional exploration I've seen of this is the film 'Pleasantville'). Some philosophers get to this point and argue that God shouldn't have made this choice, that only a cruel God would choose a world in which some people died randomly in order that we could be free and intelligent beings, but I tend to think that whilst I would really, really prefer not to have such suffering in the world, actually life would be pretty pointless if we were all smiling robots and so on balance I am prepared to believe that God made the right choice.
That's all pretty philosophical stuff, I know, and I'm someone who doesn't watch the news because I can't bear it. From a specifically Christian perspective, I find the theology of a suffering God helpful. This is an idea that became well known in the last century as people were trying to make sense of religion in the face of the discovery of the concentration camps etc. Looking at Jesus's crucifixion, there ahve been lots of different ways of explaining or trying to understand how it 'worked' - assuming the Christian belief that Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection somehow fixed things, how??? You probably need to hold all or many of the different ideas together to get a full view, but the suffering God idea is basically that the crucifixion was God entering into human suffering. The God we believe in is not one who sits on his throne up in heaven playing dice with human lives; in a disaster like this one the quesion 'where is God in all this?' can be answered 'there with the weeping relatives, there with the people whose community has been destroyed'. God enters into human suffering, knows what it is like (on the cross God not only knew the pain of death and torture, but also - as God is both Father and Son - the pain of seeing a loved one die, and furthermore the pain of feeling that one is dying abandoned by God, if Jesus's cry 'my God my God why have you forsaken me?' is anything to go by). We also believe that somehow by doing this He redeems human suffering. This is not to say that 'it all has a purpose' - ie is deliberately designed by God for certain ends - but that when something bad happens, God can use it for good - eg by strenghtening our compassion etc. And also, of course, we believe that Jesus's death and resurrection somehow opened up a way for us to be raised from the dead too, and to live with God after our deaths on earth, and so a painful and pointless death is not the last word becasue of what God has done for us.
Its all still horrible of course, I hope noone thinks I've been glib. This is very much something I struggle with, but the question was what is the believers point of view so I hope this goes some way to answer this.
I've probably cross-posted with about a zillion people as I had to think about this and my mother in law rang half way through! So sorry about that.

I agree coddy that we are the makers of our own misfortune, this really is a chicken and egg topic imo. But, ok this is selfish and there are toms of things I could say, but why does cancer exist? and aids come to that? I could go on and on but i'm sure you get my drift.

Miranda, thank you so much for your intelligent, well thought out post. That makes a lot of sense.

thank you for your post Miranda. I still find it hard to accept though.

ok kate, i haven't read everyone, and am certainly not paid up member of christian faith (more like lapsed buddhist/catholic by upbringing, new agey weirdo by type) but the whole big point thing about christianity is that god gives free choice to humans. so he lets nature (both natural and human) take it's course despite the consequences. the beauty of humanity lies it it's reaction to suffering isn't it? isn't the most wonderful thing about human beings how they can give love in the face of hate and bring kindness in the face of abject misery?

fwiw that's my tuppence worth
x

shit sorry, miranda has gone down this road already...

Yes, you're absolutely right Sophables.

Hats off Miranda!

Good point Jan.

Exactly, lockets. He gets all the credit for the good stuff and none of the responsibility for the bad (free will, mother nature etc).

and also consider the buddhist standpoint that this is all maya (illusion) (i think i'm mixing my buddhist metaphors but bear with me) and that we all die in some way at some time, it's a very very western point of view to see dying in your bed aged 99 as the only way to go and everything else as something to be feared, and the point is how we choose to live while we're here before we're reincarnated...or something

I know there are plenty on here who've suffered and who are suffering badly right now but I'm sure Kate would say the same as me, I didn't need to watch my dh suffer like he did to make myself a better kinder person. That's personal to me but I could think of thousands of other things that have happened, not least the events of this week. Oh, this is a hard discussion which i'm better off keeping out of as it's one that no-one can really resolve with any certainty

errr...why he? and surely god (our own sacredness and the interconnectedness and spirit of the planet...maybe?) is beyond giving credit/blaming??? surely it/he/she is the power of all that is on this planet and beyond and something else over and above that?

sorry, last post was to janh